Markham sat down at the bar and stared open-mouthed at the crescent moon above the stage.
He finally understood.
Chapter 24
“I’m telling you I found it,” Markham shouted into his BlackBerry—traffic, a semi passing him on the interstate making it hard to hear.
“You don’t think it’s a coincidence?” Schaap asked on the other end.
“No. The murder sites mimic the dynamic of the Starlight Theater itself—the lips and the microphone inside the stars, the crescent moon. Vlad is literally responding to a message in the sky—perhaps even to a voice that he thinks is speaking to him.”
“Then you’re thinking the theater is where it all began?” Schaap asked.
“Yes. Maybe Vlad had some kind of epiphany there. Maybe something about Rodriguez’s performance set him off. Christ, Vlad could be a performer at Angel’s himself for all I know at this point. All I can tell you is that Rodriguez was the first because of his connection with the crescent-moon visual in the drag theater. I just know it.”
“But how the hell did you connect Rodriguez to Angel’s?”
“The possible homosexual connection to Canning,” Mar- ham lied. “I started canvassing the gay bars in Raleigh on a hunch. Started alphabetically and got lucky.”
Silence on the other end—the sound of Andy Schaap thinking, not believing him. Markham felt a pang of guilt about lying to his partner, but he would take Marla Rodriguez’s secret to the grave with him, no matter what.
“I also checked out the alley behind the club,” Markham continued. “That’s where the performers come and go. It’s dark back there, hidden, and has an adjoining parking lot and a broken-down fence through which the killer could’ve slipped in and out. If Vlad hit them there, if he neglected to pick up his bullet casings—”
“Forensic team is already on its way,” Schaap said. “I’ll meet them there in—”
“No, I need you back at the RA.”
“Why?”
“Just a hunch, but I think I may have discovered Vlad’s constellation, too.”
Chapter 25
“That’s incredible,” Schaap said, leaning in. “The stars line up almost perfectly with the murder sites.”
Markham removed his tracing of the Starlight Theater logo from the map on his computer screen. He held it up next to his BlackBerry and compared it to the picture he’d taken at the club.
“But Sam,” Schaap continued, “there are only three stars in that logo—one star, according to you, for each of the murder sites. If Vlad is following this schematic—that is, if he’s mimicking the pattern of the Starlight logo on the ground—one could argue that his killing spree is over.”
“You’re forgetting about the pair of lips next to the crescent moon.”
“You mean the lips could be thought of as a possible murder site, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“The lips are in roughly the same position as the star in the symbol for Islam. But, per your map, that would put a murder site almost in the center of Raleigh itself.”
Markham set the tracing and the BlackBerry on his desk—leaned on his elbows and rubbed his forehead, thinking. “Those lips and the crescent moon,” he said finally. “When I was sitting there in the theater it was as if something was speaking to me, too. I can’t explain it, Schaap, but I don’t think those lips are finished speaking to Vlad either.”
“The ‘I’ in ‘I have returned,’ you mean? A figure literally speaking to Vlad from the stars? Like in the drag theater?”
“That’s what I think, yes.”
“But Vlad didn’t start writing on his victims until Canning.”
“Right. And the writing was different on Donovan—the phrase written over and over again and then washed off—which means Vlad is still evolving. Perhaps his pattern on the ground is evolving, too. Maybe the three stars in the logo are a starting point off of which he plans to build a bigger picture. I also wonder if he didn’t know what he was doing yet with Rodriguez and Guerrera. Or maybe his plans got screwed up and he didn’t have time to impale them alive.”
“The gunshots you mean?”
“That’s right. Vlad held on to Rodriguez and Guerrera for about forty-eight hours. He held on to Donovan and Canning for longer. We know for sure that Donovan died from the impaling itself, but I’m willing to bet Canning did, too. They were also murdered one at a time and put on display individually, unlike the Hispanics. It’s why I now have a feeling that Rodriguez was the prize all along—at Angel’s—and Guer-rera showed up unexpectedly. Vlad had to improvise.”
“Rodriguez and Guerrera were lovers, you think?”
“I don’t know. We might never know unless we can tie them together.”
Just then an agent poked his head into Markham’s office. Joe Connelly was his name—a big, rough-voiced guy with whom Markham had talked about the Red Sox the week be- fore. Markham was happy for some reason to find out that Big Joe was a Sox fan, even though he himself had never given a rat’s ass about baseball.
“Kid’s stuff is starting to come in,” Big Joe said. “I’ll leave everything in the conference room before the first batch goes out to Quantico.”
“Thanks,” Markham said. “Come on, Schaap, let’s take a look.”
Schaap followed Markham into the conference room. Spread out on the table were the remains of Jose Rodriguez’s act—the shoebox and its contents that Markham had seen earlier, all tagged and placed inside clear plastic bags—as well as a large wig on a Styrofoam head and a CD in a plastic case. They had also been tagged and bagged.
Markham and Schaap each put on a pair of rubber gloves.
“So,” Schaap said, holding up the plastic bag containing the wig. “He called himself Ricky Martinez when he wore this shit?”
“No,” Markham said, fingering the other items. “Angel said his stage name was something else—something Spanish.”
“Here it is,” Schaap said. “A piece of masking tape underneath the wig on the forehead. Leona Bonita, it says. I don’t speak Spanish, but I know the word
It was Markham. He looked as if he’d seen a ghost.
“What is it, Sam?”
“Leona Bonita,” he said. “It means beautiful lion.”
“So?”
“Leo the lion is one of the constellations that return to the nighttime sky in the spring. It’s also one of the constellations that would’ve passed through the Hispanics’ sight lines on the night they were left in the cemetery.”
“You think there might be a connection there, too? Because Rodriguez called himself Leona Bonita?”
“The crescent-moon visual, the stars at the club, and then the beautiful lion literally singing beneath them— maybe that’s why Vlad didn’t bother writing the messages on him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe Vlad saw him as part of the message—perhaps the most important part. The figure speaking to him in the stars—the lips with the microphone beside the crescent moon—they could represent to Vlad the mouth of Leo the lion.”
“Jesus Christ.”
“And if Vlad thought it was Leo speaking to him through Rodriguez, he would have no need to write on
